| I explained the purpose behind an ideal type -- I'm not sure if you actually read and/or understood what I wrote. Very few sociologists would suggest that you ever get a pure ideal type in reality. You will never get pure capitalism; but neither can you every expect to see pure communism, socialism or anything else. Types are analytical devices -- and this applies to capitalism as much as it does to communism.
You're wrong that the vast majority of the population does not have a stake in the financial markets. Between pension funds, private shareholdings, and a few other investment devices, participation in the financial markets is a lot higher than most people seem to think. I also included commodity markets there -- and that includes things like oil (which is not a perfectly competitive market) and grain -- which are far more invasive in their impact on people's lives.
In the sense you seem to mean, no system is self-correcting. The ideal-type of capitalism is, in fact, self-correcting, but it will never exist. The ideal type of communism is also self-correcting (although much less so that I suspect you believe), but, once again, it can never actually exist. I agree that capitalism is flawed in theory; but I also would argue that communism is flawed in theory. All theoretically defined social systems are imperfect. All practical social systems are imperfect reflections of social theories. But if we don't use them, then we end up with a complex point-wise comparison between specific cases -- and that's simply too complex for any form of analysis (or, more precisely, if you preserve the full complexity, you are not performing analysis). |